


A Pre-Existing Rhythm

by fourfreedoms



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-12
Updated: 2008-08-12
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:01:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny tries to throw Flack's need for control</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pre-Existing Rhythm

Beat. Breathe. Beat. Breathe. Beat. Breathe.

Flack stared at the paper target. The neon lighting of the range flickered and fizzed, throwing shadows across the bulls-eye. He squeezed off two shots, imagining it was yielding flesh rather than paper. The little punctures on the paper weren't nearly so satisfying an image. He waited a moment, feeling destabilizing adrenaline flow through his system, and fired off the rest of the magazine.

Beat. Breathe. Beat. Breathe. Beat. Breathe.

He reeled the target in. There were seven tightly grouped holes, and one outlier perilously towards the bottom of the target. Fuck. Not quite under control. Flack took a deep swallow of air, imagining his heart and lungs stilling under his command.

He bit his lip and loaded a second clip into the magazine. With the earmuffs on he could feel his blood beat at his temples. He felt like a wreck. Like he was going to start spraying bullets all over the range.

He heard his father's voice like he was standing beside him. _Never forget, Don, guns were made to hurt, maim, and kill. A necessary evil—_.

He shook his father's lecture out of his head and used up the magazine in one go, not even stopping to blink. This time when he examined the target the bullet holes were arranged perfectly in the center—8 shots, five punctures in the bulls-eye.

He engaged the safety on his gun and pulled off the orange headphones and goggles.

"You ever think about Sniper school?"

Flack jumped about a foot in the air and turned without thought, weapon aimed on the intruder. "Jesus, Danny," he said, lowering his service pistol, and placing a palm over his heart. Calm. Beat. Breathe. Beat. Breathe. Beat. "I could've shot you."

Danny raised his brows, but didn't point out that it wasn't loaded. "So, how about it?"

Flack turned and started gathering his stuff together. "What?"

"Sniper school?"

"No," Flack said shortly. "The only time SWAT sees action is when everything's gone FUBAR."

"Fair enough," Danny replied, expression genial.

"What are you doing here?" Flack pushed past him, nodding at the range master as he made his way to the exit.

Danny had to jog to catch up with him. "Thought I'd find you here."

"Look I don't want to talk—"

"I thought maybe we could go to this place on 9th street I know," Danny interrupted. "Makes excellent steak."

Flack stopped up short and looked at him. He didn't want to spend time with anybody. If he could have his way he'd be breaking faces and chucking people into walls. But Danny's eyes were the color of the pre-dawn sky behind his glasses. His expression said the last thing he wanted to talk about were the events of the day, but that was what made Danny so dangerous. His own reticence made Flack think he was safe, but then Danny focused those eyes on him, and suddenly his first crush, the time he shit himself in front of his third grade class, and the embarrassing sex dream he had about his mom was spilling past his lips like a torrential flood he was powerless to stop.

Flack wanted to be angry, go back to his apartment and stew, maybe pound back the last of the Heineken he'd bought for game night. He wasn't ready to be around human company yet. He felt too raw—like a Berserker desperately hanging on to the last thread of sanity after sighting blood.

But Danny's stomach growled, and before Flack realized it, his mouth was stretching into a smile. "Yeah, all right."

The place was on ninth and second and because the evening was warm but breezy Danny asked for a table outside. It was the first time in the summer that Flack hadn't felt like he was choking on the humidity—breathing soup rather than air. They ordered and Danny was talking about the Yankees when Flack was distracted by a cop car backing up over the cones cordoning off street construction as they tried to parallel park.

Danny looked over his shoulder to follow Flack's line of sight. "Jeez, New York's finest." He laughed. Flack shook his head. Danny caught his eye for a second, one canine snagging on the full swell of his lower lip, and Flack was sure he was going to bring it up, casually segue with a phony 'speaking of' and then demand answers with his stare, but Danny went right back to baseball, the sox and that whole duff-up with Ramirez.

They didn't talk after their food came. The waitress smiled at Flack, but she had a lascivious wink for Danny. Of course he noticed, because that's what Danny did. He always noticed. Flack could hear the measure of his pulse in his head again, so he dug into the steak.

"So you have kind of a Bud White complex," Danny said out of the blue. He ate with both his knife and fork at the same time. His salmon was cut into perfect flaky squares next to the hijiki salad on his plate.

"I don't!" Flack said hotly, knife skidding when he put sudden force on the piece of hangar steak he was cutting. Danny watched the motion of his hands. "I thought we weren't going to talk about it."

Danny's mouth twitched. "I never said that."

"I don't have anything to say," Flack told him simply, viciously stabbing his food with his fork. He paused for a second, "Actually, I do. I don't see myself as fucking Bud White." Danny looked at him seriously for a moment before busting up with laughter. Flack had to reexamine what he'd just said. "Oh come on, I didn't mean it that way."

Danny choked. "I'll say."

Flack tossed his napkin at him. "Shut up, I'm serious, I don't see myself as the knight in shining armor to all distressed women everywhere—"

Danny sucked air in between his teeth. "You're going to go off one day…get yourself in trouble…" Danny's eyes went faraway like he was imagining the scenario, seeing Flack rough up some suspect beyond repair. Flack wanted to hand him something—a promise, a reassurance—he wasn't sure he liked what it meant that he so desperately wanted to give it.

Danny paid the tab, threatening to knock him out and leave him if Flack tried to put down his card. Flack lifted his hands in surrender.

They headed back to Danny's place for a few beers. Danny had been DVR-ing games so that they could watch together, but it had been awhile since their schedules matched up. They were on the street in front of Danny's apartment when the sound hit his ears. It sounded like a scream, and he tensed up, hand going for his service piece, before he realized it was particularly high pitched laugh coming from the open window of the apartment above him.

Beat. Breathe. Beat. Breathe. Beat. Breathe.

When he turned Danny was watching him, expression carefully neutral.

_Our autonomic nervous system keeps the body in homeostasis, unconscious of thought, regulating all of the various systems_

Flack remembered his 7th grade science lesson. So much of his body was completely beyond his control—a self-governing system for which his input was barely required. He liked to think, when he felt life rushing in on him like the woman in the 911 call he answered today, in those moments when he had to wrestle himself back under control, that he could even stop the beating of his heart and the oxygen rushing into his blood.

Danny waited until they were safely ensconced in the walls of his apartment before saying anything. "What's going on with you, man?"

Flack struggled with what to say. He started at least five different times while Danny puttered around his kitchen, handing him an expensive micro brew like it would loosen his tongue. But there was nothing to be done, because Flack didn't even know how to explain—he didn't understand himself sometimes. Some things were as clear as crystal—become a cop, father's word is law, protect human life—but what made some people matter more than others? He'd made murderers and rapists his life and he felt like he was oceans away from understanding how they could do it when Flack turned down Sniper school because it put him in situations where the outcome was always somebody's death.

But Danny read between the lines. "Forget Bud White, you totally want to be God."

"I—" Flack struggled with an appropriate response. "Fuck you."

Danny shook his head. "The world will still turn without you pushing it."

"I'm not a control freak."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Totally are." He'd lost his sports coat somewhere after they'd stepped through the door, and now he loosened the top button on his dress shirt.

Flack leaned back on Danny's sofa and took a long pull on his beer. "We could play the are too/are not game forever."

Danny smirked. "I bet you'll flip out if I do the most unpredictable thing I can think of."

Flack didn't have time to answer. Suddenly Danny was leaning over him, lips brushing against Flack's. It was everything he wanted and nothing he allowed himself to think about. Danny went to pull back, but Flack tangled his hand in his shirt-front, tugging him down on top of him. The beer fell to the floor forgotten, spilling out a foamy amber puddle against the scarred floorboards.

Danny fell into him, and Flack bore his weight, tipping slowly horizontal on the couch, as their mouths continued to move together, tongues flickering together and apart. Danny shifted against him, got a thigh in between his knees. Flack tore his mouth away from Danny's and moaned at the sudden pressure on his rapidly hardening dick. Danny's sharp teeth grazed over his pulse and his fingers found the buttons to Flack's shirt.

Danny was trying to say something, probably how unexpected Flack's reaction was in the face of the most unpredictable thing Danny could come up with, but Flack took his mouth again. He sucked on Danny's lower lip, hands delving underneath Danny's waist band, practically trapped there by his belt.

They groaned and moved together and then Danny's hard-on slid right against his. Perfect. Flack got the heel of one foot on the floor so he could push up harder into Danny's hips, until the grip that Danny had on his skull turned painful.

"Oh, God," Danny cried, pulling back again. A thread of spit shimmered in the air between them before breaking. He'd gotten Flack's shirt mostly open now. It was still tucked into his belt, and his tie was still tight around his neck, but his chest was bare to Danny's capable hands. His hips jerked again when Danny's nails found his nipple.

He couldn't remember how to work a belt, he fiddled with Danny's buckle until it finally gave way. Then he worked his hand past Danny's boxer-briefs to wrap around his cock and get some of his own back.

Beat. Beat. Beat. Breathe. Beat. Beat. Breathe. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat.

"Control freak," Danny whispered through grit teeth and then bit at the sharp wing of his collarbone. Flack tightened his grip reflexively, tugging hard while Danny cursed and moaned above him, arms braced on either side of Flack's head. It almost hurt to look at him, cheeks flushed with fever, crystal-eyes nearly drowned in pupil. He rocked back against Flack, sitting up straight so that his weight came down on Flack's dick.

Flack's lips parted in a silent cry.

Flack wished he could see Danny naked, see whether his skin was shiny with sweat, what his chest looked like heaving in air. He swirled his thumb around the head of Danny's dick, pre-come smoothing the way. They never broke their gazes from each other.

Danny thrust forward into his grip and then back on his dick, until Flack was imagining the mattress, his hands on Danny's bare hips as he pushed inside. When Danny's lids dropped at last, he wondered if he was thinking about it too.

Danny came first when Flack's knuckles brushed against his balls and his gun calluses ran just right against the sensitive vein on the underside of his dick. He came on Flack's hand and the bared muscles of his abdomen.

Danny took a second to gasp in air before falling forward to kiss Flack again. His thumb brushed across Flack's cheekbone, and then Flack's back was bowing underneath him, arching up to seek more contact, as he lost it from friction and pressure alone. His orgasm raced through him, shocking even his autonomic system into stuttering.

Flack finally closed his eyes. Danny eased his weight off Flack's pelvis, but he didn't climb off him either. Flack was suddenly conscious of the shift and play of muscles in Danny's thighs against his sides. Danny's hand was pressed up over his heart like he knew Flack's secret.

He had to tell himself heart beat, lungs breathe.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Bud White is the muscle with a knight-in-shining-armor complex in _LA Confidential_. He's contrasted with Exley, who I suppose Danny probably could embody. He's certainly complicated enough. Anyway, the implication in _LA Confidential_ is that together Exley and White make up one good cop. Oh the slashiness of that.


End file.
